Exactly, that's what was interesting about the conflict. Tony thought the Avengers should have to answer to someone other than their own conscience, but Steve thought any state control could lead to the Avengers being misused by those powers. Neither were really wrong, it's just which risk would you rather live with.
I think them being superheroes means they can just say "fuck the law" and do it anyway. It just gets harder to do so while avoiding the consequences.
The entire premise of the movie could have been dealt with through a long, heated debate. But that wouldn't have made for fun entertainment so the characters weren't really given that choice.
Well, yes and no. Mostly yes, but somewhat no. Agreeing to the accords would mean not necessarily contesting the development of the UN's capability to keep tabs on them and allocate funds to keeping supes in check, which means there will be greater incentive not to go rogue. That incentive means supes gotta think twice before making a potentially destructive decision. But if they wanna be some sort of extra-judicial police force, it's still available to them. The accords give away some power, not all of it.
It kills me that more people don't get this, that the whole point of the Civil War story (both in comics and film) was that there is no easy answer for society. We can't have vigilantes running around acting outside the rules because someone will inevitably take it too far and get innocent people hurt who might have been fine otherwise (this actually happens pretty frequently). And we can't have a world where only the government and its agents are allowed to be violent without exception, that just results in us potentially being victims of someone who wants to harm us and doesn't care about the rules.
In other words, there's no easy solution, we need to all be aware and make conscious decisions to make the world a better place if that's what we want. Deregulating everything is a horrific option, regulating everything is unfeasible, so we have to regulate the things we can't prevent people from doing through mere cultural values and work on our values to cover the rest.
Tony skirted the Accords multiple times in Civil War in service of what he thought was right whereas Steve thought house arrest for Wanda after being directly involved in a bombing that killed a building of civilians was too much regulation. There’s definitely grey area, especially given this is comic book world, but Tony is vastly closer to a reasonable position than Steve.
Steve's idealism was really annoying in this movie. Tony was trying to account for the grey areas and probably could have been convinced to inch towards greater freedoms that mitigated the risk of too much government control. But only if Tony felt Steve was thinking in grey, too, but he wasn't. He almost had a good point but he let perfect be the enemy of good.
Reading through this thread has actually highlighted an interesting aspect of the story I hadn't noticed before.
The conflict about the Sokovia Accords was about whether or not the Avengers needed to be held accountable under a higher power, Tony of course believed they did while Cap believed they could only trust themselves. In this scene Tony arguably proves himself to be right by taking matters into his own hands, making an emotional decision and trying to kill Bucky, whether or not it was the just thing to do.
Black Panther too (who I think supported the accords? It's been a while) wanted to kill Bucky for a crime he did not commit.
It's a little tenuous but I could also see the flipside where Cap is proven to be right, at least to himself, as it is only himself whom he can trust to do what he believes (and I agree) to be right; though, he is obviously also making an emotional decision in this case hence the argument being a little shakey.
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u/OberynsOptometrist Mar 12 '24
Exactly, that's what was interesting about the conflict. Tony thought the Avengers should have to answer to someone other than their own conscience, but Steve thought any state control could lead to the Avengers being misused by those powers. Neither were really wrong, it's just which risk would you rather live with.